Bren Ryder

This is an imported note on Facebook from my blog, BrenRyder.com. Or, if you are one of the handful of readers of the blog, then you’re seeing this first hand.

Facebook is great for promoting blogs and websites and events and all that good stuff, but I definitely don’t use it to its full potential. Relatively speaking, I don’t have a lot of “friends” on my profile and it’s an interesting mix of people: close friends, ex-girlfriends, acquaintances, family, porn people, long lost friends, fans, randoms, and Internet connections.

The profile page has become more of a personal page rather than a business page so I decided to make a separate Bren Ryder fan page – except they don’t call it fan pages anymore. Now, you don’t need to be a fan to “like” me. I’d like to use the Page of Bren Ryder for blog updates and GoodDykePorn updates and news. Although, I’ll continue to add the usual links and info to my profile because I want to share my life with my friends. And fans are still welcome to friend me but for more up-to-date show-biz info then Like-ing the Page is a better option.

Currently, my blog has a low readership. Why? Because I hardly ever write for it. You can’t read what’s not there. That’s going to change as I get into the habit of writing about this experience of being an independent dyke pornographer who practices various experiments in productivity, ponders butch visibility, spiritual journeys and the evolution of queer porn.

Follow me on Twitter: @BrenRyder

“Like” me on Facebook.

Be my Friend!

And/Or Subscribe to my blog in a Reader (RSS).

I’m still here. Still making porn for dykes and the likes of you. Still perpetually experimenting with ways to be more productive and streamlining my business so that it’s delivering what I intend and satisfying my need for simplicity and, you know, enjoying life, being happy.

I have mixed feelings about my business right now. I doesn’t make me much money – just enough to top up my personal accounts when I’m a little low. It involves about a million details and keeps my Todo list perpetually stacked. Which, is fairly normal for a lot of people, but I fancy myself a simple butch and sometimes I wonder if it’s worth the hassle. The good news is that I don’t lose money in the deal. And, of course, I do get to film people having sex.

Sometimes I feel like shutting it down completely and just sticking to a regular job – go to work, come home, relax, and not have to get on the computer for the whole night. Running a business by yourself is like being in school, it’s all homework and I always feel like should be working on something. Except I don’t have any enforceable deadlines and little accountability – well, except to my millions of adoring fans.

I go back and forth between thinking about shutting it down completely and, the other extreme, expanding it and seeing if I can actually make some money out of it. It is porn after all, there must be money to be made.

I love filming, and I love editing and I’ve basically turned my favourite thing into a job, but I suck at accounting, marketing, promotion, and, um…business. So this is the point where I get to reach out to my community and get help from those who are good at those things and want to do their part to bring good dyke porn to the world. Except I suck at doing that too.

I’m not ready to give up on this thing yet. I’m working on some ideas that will allow for better access to individual scenes and various options for memberships and prices. My main priority is customer satisfaction. Shooting new sex scenes in a small community isn’t always possible on a consistent basis. And, frankly, I don’t want to stress over it. I’m looking for that sweet spot: the place where I don’t stress too badly, still get to create the work, and consistently fulfill the customers expectations of what I’ve promised to deliver.

December is suddenly upon us and we’re zipping through it like nobody’s business. That’s how it feels to me. Last month I set the intention to participate in the NaNoWriMo – National November Writing Month – and write everyday for a month. It didn’t quite work out. I got behind and lost interest pretty quickly. I’m a Gemini so it’s hard for me to stick to anything for very long. But, I don’t feel bad about it. It was my first attempt. Perhaps next year I’ll stick with it a bit longer.

My intention for writing during the month of November was to create a Dyke Porn Manifesto. It is my one goal for 2009 and I was going to spend the month producing a lot of words and then take December to edit it all into a comprehensible manifesto. Since that didn’t happen, I’m going to alter the plan a little bit so I can still achieve my one goal for 2009. Next week I’m going to spend one full day writing out everything that’s in my head that says all I need to say about the Dyke Porn Manifesto at this time. I have one day to get it all out in writing. Then, when I take my Christmas holidays I’ll be spending a week in the middle of the prairies during the frigid winter with my parents. So, at that time I’ll put the words together in a concise article that will be available for viewing on the blog. That’s my new intention.

Intentions are funny. Whatever you intend is always something that you really want because to intend for it is to place a strong desire on making it happen. But, at the same time, for the magic of intention to really work we need to be unconcerned about the ultimate outcome: unattached. This is not to say that I don’t care about achieving the outcome of my intention but if it doesn’t come into fruition then I am comfortable with that as a potential outcome.

Perhaps that is what is meant by being unattached. It is simply being open to all potential outcomes. One potential outcome is getting every wish and desire granted. It is possible so I have to remain open to that. The absence of the ideal outcome is also a possibility and I need to be open and accepting of that possibility, as well.

I could intend to win the lottery. But, I have to be willing to do what it takes for that to happen. I would have to buy a lottery ticket regularly and allow, for the rest of my life, to either win the lottery or not. All outcomes need to be allowed to exist. Personally, I don’t actually want to win the lottery. It doesn’t appeal to me at all, so I don’t buy lottery tickets or think about wanting to win.

These days I’m thinking about a future where I write for my full-time income. By accepting that I may never achieve this I am making room for the existence of all possibilities including my most desired outcome. So, like buying a lottery ticket everyday, I simply begin to do what’s necessary to write for a living. I write. If you are reading this then you know that I’m already getting started in achieving this outcome.

But, when will my intention be realized? How long should I keep trying, keep intending? That depends on how badly I want it. I think the length of time it takes to achieve my most desired outcome is going to be  paradoxically linked to my ability to be unattached to the outcome coupled with the intensity of my desire to achieve it.

Subscribe to this blog in your Reader to get all the latest updates.

Follow me on Twitter.

Writing is a relatively new venture for me. I’ve written papers in University and I’ve been keeping a journal for many years. But, eventually I’d like to turn writing into another art form that I can use to share my perspective of the world with anyone who’s interested in reading it. I’m not exactly sure how it’s all going to come about. For now, I’m content to continue to develop writing skills, see what’s important to me, figure out what my perspective is and write in my blog. The problem is that I feel really self-conscious about it. I’m shy. I joke about my shyness to my friends because I’m a porn star to a certain degree – to the degree that I take off my clothes and fuck on camera for the purpose of making porn. But, I’m shy.

I don’t post blog articles on here as often as I’d like to but when I do it’s usually about how I feel about things or what I’m up to. Currently, I have two categories for my blog articles, “Me” and “The Work”. Most of the time it’s about both of those things. Because why would I be writing about me if I wasn’t writing about the work I’m doing and how could I write about the work I’m doing without writing about myself.

My intention for this blog has always been to share my life with you. I figure it might be interesting to see the mundane goings-on of a dyke pornographer. Everything I do is at my computer, in my apartment and occasionally in fun and interesting places with sexy porn friends. As a voyeur, I know that I would find this kind of thing interesting to follow.

But, then the damn self-conscious editor gets into my head: “boring, who would want to read that, think of something interesting, stop being so lazy and do something with your life, that’s not even a sentence, etc”.

When I do porn I don’t think about the people around the world that will be looking at my naked body, I think about creating something new and important. I fuck like no one is watching. I know that people will appreciate what we’re doing and that turns me on.

Here I am exposing my thoughts and my life to you through writing. What will you think of me? What difference does it make, really? I’m not ashamed of my pussy and I should not be ashamed of my thoughts and their written form. You might not want to see me dance when I think no one’s looking, but here you can see me blog like no one is reading.

Traditionally, November has been one of my worst months out of the year. Bad things happen, mood is low, and it feels like a very long month. December I like. It’s a time to kick back, party with friends and family, look back over the year and make plans for the new one.

This November I’m going to take on a few projects that I’m hoping will make November a better month.

November is novel writing month (NaNoWriMo) so I’m taking this opportunity to try my hand at writing again. I wrote for the Three-Day Novel writing contest which was super fun. My goal early this year was to write my Porn Manifesto. So, that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
Along side with writing this manifesto, I’m going to document – journal style – all the things I do this month related to creating porn and running my website, GoodDykePorn.com. So, whether this month turns out great or not I’m hoping that writing about it will make it interesting, anyway.

Earlier this year I made a list of 101 Things To Do. And there is still plenty on that list that I still need to do.
I have a huge TO DO list and I’m going to tackle as much as I can in November. That way, I have something to write about, a limited time frame to push myself and hopefully an alignment between my vision (manifesto) and my actions (journal).

Here is where we’re starting:
This past week has been November-esque in the sense that I have lost (more like misplaced) a lot of media that I need for the website. Specifically the footage that I intended to post on the site this past weekend. I’m hoping that by the end of this week I’ll have it all worked out and be done with “unfortunate luck” for a little while.
[To see the live performance version of the upcoming scene - go to the Updates Page on GoodDykePorn.com.]

Also, we’re essentially starting from nowhere. I haven’t been writing on this blog for a while and the website has only just begun the new updates. So, writing the Manifesto is going to be about the vision of Good Dyke Porn™ and the documentation of Bren Ryder working GoodDykePorn.com is going to show my attempt to put that vision into action.

I’ll keep you updated on my writing progress and work activities for the month of November. To get the latest updates and excerpts from the upcoming Manifesto, subscribe to this blog or follow me on Twitter.

Wish me luck!

Of course, by “we” I mean me. I managed to get all the articles back online with the help of my Facebook imported notes. I still have a lot of work to do here – redo pictures, add bloggers to the blogroll, affiliate friends – but the content is up and that’s what’s important (if you’re into read words, that is).

September is back-to-work-month so new updates will be appearing at GoodDykePorn.com and new and fascinating blog articles will be showing up right here.

Enjoy.

I’ll have everything back to normal by the end of the day (hopefully).
And then I’ll be back to regular blogging.

Thanks for stopping by!
Check out GoodDykePorn.com to see my work.

Love!

I lost all my data due to my own error so now I need to reload all the previous posts and get this baby up and running.

Stay tuned.

Recently, I was named #17 in a list of 100 Top Hot Butches. This list was created by Sinclair Sexsmith of The Sugarbutch Chronicles and judged by a panel of other bloggers and friends.

First of all, I have to say that I am completely honoured to be included on the list and thrilled that I made Top 20. One of the main criteria for being included on the list (besides having masculine appearance and being attractive to the panelists) was doing something in the public sphere in 2009. It is so validating to be noticed. That was the goal. I was even given the title of “Porn Pioneer”. Talk about making your dreams come true. One day I decide I’d like to change the face of queer porn, the next day I’m being referred to as a porn pioneer on a list that includes so many incredible artists.

The thing that I love about this list is that it’s saying something really important: Butches are hot!

At the beginning of my adult life I had a phase of heterosexuality, which was fine. I dated guys, then moved onto the next phase. The one thing that really hit me when I came out was that I went from being an ugly straight girl to a hot lesbian. It was really interesting to experience (and oh so fun). Hotness is in the eye of the beholder. And butch hotness is becoming more and more widely accepted. We can talk about the politics and flaws in deeming someone hot or not until we’re blue in the face, but I’d like to praise the evolution of hotness that is now including people like butches and queers. This is a new development. Granted, this list is still an event within our little queer corner, but, it still makes an impact.

There were some murmurings of controversy regarding the inclusion of trans guys in the list. I read some opinions and I see what they’re saying, but I think sometimes gender politics can take itself a little too seriously. From my understanding some people (not the people listed themselves) didn’t like the inclusion of transmen in a list of masculine women. The inclusion apparently invalided their maleness. I don’t buy it.

In my opinion, using words that include a lot of different types of people is liberating. And what those words happen to be will change over time. Gay, queer, butch, femme, trans: they have all had different meanings in the past and are going to have different meanings in the future. Some of us have word preferences. Sinclair likes butch and wants to change people’s mental image of what a butch is. I like ‘dyke’ (as in GoodDykePorn.com) and want to change people’s mental image of what a dyke is, in particular what dyke porn is. Good Dyke Porn is inclusive. Those are words that I strung together. The people themselves identify in many many different ways: queer, bisexual, trans, butch, femme, male, female, genderqueer, top, bottom, and who knows what else.

This Top Hot Butches list is a celebration of butches who are doing work that’s important to them that other people see. Why wouldn’t transguys be included? To me, being butch is mostly about outward appearance. It’s about a natural masculine expression. The actual experience of being a butch is as varied as there are butches. Some are writers, pornographers, actors, singers, musicians, performance artists, and theorists. Some are tops, bottoms, celibate, have tits, have no tits, transitioned genders, never cry, great cooks, handy around the house, good with money, moody and you see where I’m going with this.

To follow the line of argument I’ve seen so far, yes, cisgender males can be butch too (I’m still getting used to that cis-word, it’s like some underground queer vernacular, but it works best for descriptive purposes). But they get more than their fair share of the spotlight, so let’s just leave them out of this. You’re in the queer bubble, people, follow along in your programs.

If someone created a list of 100 Top Trans Hotties and I was included on that list I wouldn’t mind. It’s not how I self-identify, but the purpose of having a public life is to share our work with the world. Put me on any kind of list you want. I’ll pay attention to the positive ones, ignore the negative and be grateful you’re learning about the work that I’m doing my best to create.

My Good Dyke Porn™ business soul mate, that is.

I’ve decided I want a partner. I’m feeling ready to share my toys with others and see what happens when more that one person works at creating an impact on a porno revolution. Of course, I haven’t been the only one creating the work of GoodDykePorn.com. There are many models, a few camera operators, volunteers, a graphic designer, a composer and an investor. But the day-to-day work is done entirely by me. I love doing it on my own, but I’m feeling open to finding the right person to share the work, the joy and, the money.

I use the term “soul mate” because I feel as though the right person for the job is going to be someone who is a lot more than just skilled in one area or another. The right person is going to click with me another level. Now, I love clicking with people. I click all the time. But, this click needs to be special. This isn’t love, this is business, but it’s gotta be magic.

I think the greatest benefit of having a partner is that we can motivate each other. We can inspire each other. And, we can impose deadlines on each other. I see us getting together for a business meeting once a week, doing some brainstorming and planning, and then assigning a few tasks for each of us to complete for the next week. Due to the fact that this meeting is very important I am currently only looking for someone who lives in Vancouver, BC. If you live in the Lower Mainland and want to commute into Vancouver for the meetings then you may also apply.

Our financial arrangements will be discussed later, however, considering the current status of the website (paused), there will be no payment for work done for at least the first 3 to 6 months. Currently, all incoming revenue is being reinvested into the website – which is why I had to get a day job again (I’m really liking it though. It’s getting me out of the house and I enjoy doing something completely different from running the porn biz for part of my time). So, you must have a day job and the will to work Good Dyke Porn in your spare time.

Here are a few things that come to mind regarding what I’m seeking in a partner:

* I’m looking for someone who has a variety of skills or has an ability to learn new things quickly.
* Computer skills are essential and an up-to-date computer is preferred.
* Film and video experience isn’t necessary and film industry experience is really unnecessary and maybe even a drawback. Depends.
* Knowledge of business, accounting, marketing, video editing, graphic design, webmastery, or camera operation are all wonderful, but not required. I taught myself everything and perhaps you can do the same.
* Maybe you’d like to be in the public eye.
* Maybe you’d rather work behind the scenes.
* You are passionate, but not overbearing.
* You are easy-going, but not aloof.
* You live in Vancouver.
* You are queer.
What else?

I’m open to hearing why you think you’d like to work at Good Dyke Porn™.
It’s amazingly rewarding work and together we can make it Great and even make some money.

Send me an email. Tell me about yourself, your schedule, your experience and why you’d like to be my GDP Soul Mate.
To: bren@gooddykeporn.com

Love,
Bren Ryder